Encouraging news on injured Bucs safety Cody Grimm

Tampa Bay Buccaneers safety Cody Grimm, who was placed on injured reserve last month with a knee injury, made an appearance at One Buc Place on Tuesday, giving us our first opportunity to speak with him since the incident.

And, as it turns out, Grimm had some encouraging news to share.

Though it was previously believed that Grimm had torn an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), he says his ACL is completely intact. The extent of his injury, he explained, was actually a torn meniscus and torn medial collateral ligament (MCL). That's a less severe injury than an ACL tear, largely because the rehab timeline is shorter.

Meniscus tears are routine in the NFL, and players often undergo surgery and return in the same season. The MCL injury usually doesn't involve surgery, but Grimm's tear did because of the severity of his tear, Grimm said. ACL injuries can sideline players for as much as a year, but the MCL recovery timeline is generally shorter. This likely explains why the Bucs initially seemed indecisive about placing Grimm on injured reserve, as the team perhaps wondered whether there was a chance he could return late in the season.

In any case, Grimm, while disappointed, could have come out of this a lot worse than he did. There's little reason to think he wouldn't be ready to go when next season gets underway.

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